


The only constant

by becca_letters



Category: Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Genre: F/M, Gen, a.k.a. Gigi's backstory, sibling fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-27
Updated: 2013-01-27
Packaged: 2017-11-27 01:20:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/656454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/becca_letters/pseuds/becca_letters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She jumps into the deep end feet first.  She holds her breath, opening her eyes under the water.  The chlorine barely stings her eyes anymore.  Her mother always said that Georgiana swam before she could walk.  She looks up through the distorted waves of water, listening to the beat her legs, then the muffled sounds of coaches yelling and parents cheering on their children.  When her lungs start to burn she kicks sharply until she breaks through the surface.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The only constant

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I obviously don't own the Lizzie Bennet Diaries, and some of the information used in this story does belong to Hank Green et al.
> 
> Author's Note: I haven't written in what feels like forever and am quite nervous about this fic. I tried to beta it myself, so if you find any errors please let me know.

She jumps into the deep end feet first. She holds her breath, opening her eyes under the water. The chlorine barely stings her eyes anymore. Her mother always said that Georgiana swam before she could walk. She looks up through the distorted waves of water, listening to the beat her legs, then the muffled sounds of coaches yelling and parents cheering on their children. When her lungs start to burn she kicks sharply until she breaks through the surface.

She cuts through the water, arms propelling her forward until she can reach the edge. She treads the water while she places her goggles where they need to be, then with another deep breath she submerges her head and starts to glide through the water.

It’s quieter now and she doesn’t have time to think of anything but the rotation of her shoulders, the angle of her arms, the smooth motion, up and down, from the hip and not the knee.

Swimming has always been constant in her life.

****

Gigi doesn’t remember the first time she was in a pool, but she’s seen photos. Her father showed them to her once when she was five. 

In the photo Gigi is not yet a year old. She’s floating on some kind of chair, giant sunglasses perched on her nose, frames the same bright yellow as the polka dots on her bathing suit. William is behind her, holding the chair still for the photograph, his hair is wet, plastered against his forehead, and he looks as happy as she’s ever seen him. He stays frozen like that in her mind, holding her steady and smiling brightly.

Her father tells her stories, says that even before the photo Gigi’s mother had already taken her into the water, tossed her in the deep end to watch what she could do.

“You reached out your arms and kicked you little legs as hard as you could,” he whispers into her hair one night before bed. “I’ve never seen anything so wonderful.” Gigi snuggles further into his arm and her pillows feeling warm and safe. 

“Your brother yelled at us, swam halfway across the pool in a second he was so worried. But when you broke your little head through the surface… “ she feels him shake his head, his chin brushing against her hair, then his chest rumbles with a low laugh. It tickles against her back and makes her smile. “No one was prouder of you that day than your brother.”

Gigi loves William a whole lot, she thinks as she closes her eyes and drifts off to sleep.

****

When Gigi is nine and William is sixteen, their parents ask him to start taking her to swim practice. She’s always loved the water. Gigi knows that her mom and dad both work, but swimming was always something that they did together as a family. She doesn’t understand why things can’t stay the way they’ve always been.

She throws a tantrum, yelling and screaming that she hates William and her parents and she never wants to swim again. She calls them stupid and pointless, tells them that they obviously don’t care about her at all. She slams the door to her room and refuses to come out for anyone.

It’s not until George comes and knocks on her door quietly twenty minutes before her lesson is supposed to start that she talks to anyone.

“What’s up, buttercup?” he says in that funny voice he sometimes uses only with her. She doesn’t say thing back, but she can already feel a stupid smile start to spread across her face. “Seriously, Gigi,” she flips over on her bed and watches George walk over to her, “what’s all the drama?”

He sits down beside her, and it’s funny but her heart beats a little faster. She hopes he can’t hear it as she explains how completely lame her parents are being, and how she really wants her mom to take her to practice like always. 

George clucks her on the chin, thumb and forefinger grazing her skin. “Don’t be so hard on them, Peach.” His hand slides down to her shoulder. She can feel all five fingers against her skin through her t-shirt. “Besides, Will and I want to come hang out at the pool.”

“You’re coming,” she asks, shifting her eyes rather than her head. His eyes are really, really blue and so pretty. She wishes her eyes were blue like his. When she looks in the mirror, hers are too dark; people hardly notice them, or just assume that they’re brown because of her hair. 

“Sure, I am,” he says. “But we’ve got to get your stuff together if we’re going to be there on time.” He drops his hand from her shoulder, stands up, and stretches his arms up high. His shirt pulls up leaving a strip of tanned skin visible. She hides her blush behind a curtain of hair, standing up beside him and grabbing her swim bag. Maybe this will be the start of a new tradition.

“Ready?” he asks holding her bedroom door open for her. She’s never had a boy do that. It makes her stomach flutter.

She nods her head and walks quickly out of the room, careful to keep a good amount of space between her arms and George’s body.

****

When Gigi is eleven things change again.

William shakes her out of a dream about the pool – she’s competing that weekend, or that day, her brain is all confused with sleep.

She blinks rapidly in the dark, her eyes adjusting slowly. “Gigi,” he says her name but it’s wrong. She doesn’t know why, but she can hear it. She knows his voice and he’s never sounded like this before. He says her name again, this time stronger, clearer.

“What is it?” she mumbles, still half asleep. His hand finds hers over the covers, and he laces their fingers together. He tells her then, robotic and cold. His grip on her fingers tightens until she wants to beg him to let go because he’s hurting her. He’s hurting her and she’ll need her hands if she’s going to compete.

It can’t be right, she thinks. She doesn’t realize she says this out loud until her brother replies. “They’re gone, Gigi.” 

She sits up, tries to shake off his hands, but William wraps his arms around her tight, tucking her head under his chin. She shifts against him, hitting at his chest, trying to break free to tell him he can’t be right. They were only going out for dinner in the city. They said they would be home by midnight at the latest. Maybe they just had too much to drink, or maybe they stayed with their friends in town. There has to be some kind of misunderstanding because they can’t be dead. They can’t be.

They just can’t.

William tells her to get dressed, even goes so far as to turn on the lights in her closet and pick out some jeans and a dark sweater for her to wear. She wants to scream at him that this is wrong, but she sees the look in his eyes.

“The police are here.”

She doesn’t remember getting dressed or walking down the stairs. Doesn’t remember her Aunt Catherine showing up, or anything much over the next few days. 

Then suddenly she’s standing over two gravestones, William holding one hand, and George holding the other.

She remembers that so clearly, she dreams about it for weeks afterwards.

****

William fights to take care of her.

He thinks she doesn’t know, but she hears him talking to their father’s lawyer late at night. He’ll be eighteen in a few months, and everyone keeps saying that he’s too young to take on the responsibility of raising a child. Gigi doesn’t really think she’s much of a child anymore. 

Her parents are dead.

She’s not anyone’s child anymore.

William fights to keep her swimming, drives her to practice every morning, cheers her on from the bench at every meet. Sometimes George is there beside him chanting her name, jumping up and down as she crosses the finish line.

Sometimes he’s not.

****

William is accepted to Harvard that winter. Gigi tells him that he should go. She can stay with their aunt Catherine while she’s at school and he can come and visit her as often as he likes. It’s not like money is the problem. Their parents certainly left them enough of that.

He spends the next seven months spending as much time with her as he can. 

He often comes to the pool with her in the mornings, swimming laps himself. He doesn’t have the same technique as Gigi. His breathing isn’t as deep or staggered as necessary, but he moves gracefully all the same. When he steps out of the pool the older girls always stare at him, but he never even looks back at them.

When George comes along, which is normally a few times a week, he teases Gigi into swimming faster than she should. She forgets about the importance of endurance. George does flirt back with the older girls at the pool. Touches their arms or hair and smiles at them with those perfectly white teeth.

Gigi sometimes catches herself staring, watching the way he walks or leans in when a particularly pretty girl pushes her hair off her shoulder. She never says anything, only dips her face back into the water for another lap, or propels herself out of the water, pushing hard on her hands, running to reach her towel.

She pretends that nothing is happening when George finally looks over at her and winks. She tells herself that her face is only warm because of the exercise and that he’ll never see her as anything but his friend’s younger sister.

****

Three weeks before William is supposed to go away to school George disappears. One day he’s there at the house, and then suddenly a week has gone by without him. 

William seems preoccupied, sad even, but he never tells her why. She knows that something is going on and she hates that he won’t tell her, because she’s practically twelve and a half, that’s almost a teenager, and it’s not like she won’t understand.

She starts to ask him about it half a dozen times, but he never responds.

****

Their Aunt Catherine drives William and Gigi out to the airport the week before school is supposed to start. The drive is almost silent, except for the soft music on the car’s radio. Gigi spends most of her time picking at the stitching on the leather in the backseat, chewing on her lip until it swells.

When the car stops Gigi jumps out. William opens the trunk, hauling his bags to the curb. When he’s done, he turns and wraps his arms around Gigi tightly. He smells like soap, fresh and clean. The wool of his sweater scratches against her face as she buries her head in his chest, lacing her fingers together behind his back.

“I’ll miss you,” she says. She really means it. She’s happy for him, but she doesn’t know what she’s going to do without him.

“I’ll miss you, too.” He kisses the top of her head and her eyes start to sting. She misses their parents so much it burns. She doesn’t want him to leave. 

“You won’t forget about me, will you?” she asks quietly. She hopes she knows the answer.

“Of course not,” he replies. “I love you, Gigi.”

He thanks Aunt Catherine for the ride, grabs his bags and starts to walk into the airport. “I’ll call you when I get there,” he says as he walks away from her.

Gigi watches until he’s disappeared behind he sliding doors into the crowds of people lining up.

She cries on the drive home, but Aunt Catherine doesn’t say anything, doesn’t offer a hand or word. Gigi wonders if this is what her life will be like now.

****

She takes up tennis. She likes the physicality of it, likes the quick stop and start of the movements. 

William plays with her whenever he’s home from school. It’s not as often as she would like, but he e-mails her, and calls almost every night he’s not with her.

When he does call William talks about his housemates, Bing and Fitz. Gigi talks about how she’s doing in school. She talks to him about how her friends are throwing a party on the weekend or going to the movies. She talks about how she’s really looking forward to going. They talk about his classes and teachers, but she’s much more interested in hearing about his social life. He doesn’t talk about women much. There was one girl, he mentioned her a few times, but nothing recent. She doesn’t push him. She moves on and talks about Catherine and the silly dog she just brought home who can’t do anything for herself.

Then there are the things she never says. Like how dark and empty her aunt’s house really is. Like how much she misses his hugs and the smell of his soap. How she has a really great group of friends but still sometimes feels so alone when she’s with them. 

She misses their parents, but they never talk about that either.

She tells him about her tennis coach, and how she’s still swimming but only a few days a week and not competitively at all.

Then inevitably there is some kind of noise in the background of the call and William says he has to go.

When she hangs up the phone, her fingers linger on the plastic. The bitterness of loneliness floods her mouth, and she rushes off to the bathroom to brush her teeth.

****

She’s accepted into UC Berkeley. Even though Pemberley’s main offices are in San Francisco, William spends much of his time at the L.A. office, so she’ll have to start looking for a place of her own. When she tells him the news they immediately start to look for condos close to campus.

They find her a really nice one bedroom loft. Spacious enough, but still simple. William does like to keep things simple and Gigi really doesn’t mind. 

The minute she walks through the doorway, she loves it. 

The walls are a dusty yellow, but the windows are huge panels of glass that reach from the ceiling to the floor. There’s a living room with a small fireplace, and the bedroom has a small balcony that faces the campus. 

She immediately imagines her furniture here, a giant tan coloured couch, with blankets and throw pillows in burnt oranges and reds. She’ll put paintings of her mother’s and her own works on the walls, along with a few choice prints she knows that William will approve of.

She smiles at William and he signs the papers right then and there. She won’t move in until the summer, but it’s nice to know that the place will be hers.

Finally something that is hers alone.

****

She’s mid-way through her second year at UC Berkeley when she sees him. It’s just a glimpse of blond hair and broad shoulders, but she knows it’s him. He’s across the quad, and she runs towards him with her bag held tight against her shoulder.

“George,” she yells. She should probably be more concerned with her appearance. Her hair is in a messy ponytail. She’s wearing jeans, a sweater and no make-up. She doesn’t look like anything special at all, but that fades as George turns towards her voice. 

She sees the grin spread across his face, and he turns, puts his arms out to catch her in a giant hug.

Her heart is racing, she’s having trouble controlling her breathing, but she fits perfectly in his arms. He smells like spice and man and the fabric of his shirt is soft against her fingers.

When he pulls back to look at her, he’s not looking at his friend’s little sister anymore. She tucks her hair behind her ear and stares right back as his eyes travel up her body. She’s a woman now and is glad that he recognizes it.

They end up talking for hours over coffee. She runs her fingers suggestively over the rim of the cup, and loves how his eyes follow her fingers as they dance over the porcelain. 

“I’m hoping to join the swim team,” she says off-handedly. She’s been practicing almost daily since the beginning of term.

“I could coach you if you like, Peach,” he says. No one else has ever called her that. Only George. It makes her feel closer to him somehow. 

He is a very good swimmer, and he does have lovely shoulders.

“You’re sure you have the time?” She crosses her legs under the table, leaning forward onto her elbows. She can’t seem to control the slight bouncing motion of her leg.

“For you,” he winks at her, “anything.”

They set up times after school three times a week. Gigi has promised that she’ll be training for tennis on the off-days.

She leaves the coffee shop happy in the knowledge that George Wickham is about to become a permanent fixture in her life.

****

He tastes like chlorine and tomato sauce, but she can’t get enough of him. Her lips skim across his face, down his jaw. She loves the feel of his stubble against her tongue, the vibrations of the moan through the skin of his neck. He’s totally at her mercy right now and she’s enjoying every second of it.

He moves his hands so that they rest on her hips, he pushes her just a bit, and she pulls back like she’s been burned. She stares down at him, realizing the horrible position she’s in. She’s sitting in his lap and he’s pushing her away. He’s about to reject her and she’s just sitting there like an absolute idiot and all she wants to do is cover her face and cry and scream and- 

“Open your eyes,” he says. It’s mortifyingly hard to do, but she does it because it’s George and she loves him. “Not here,” he whispers. She climbs off his lap covering her face with her hands.

“Maybe you should…”

“No, Gigi,” he interjects. “Not _here_.” His hand reaches out and pulls at her fingers until she’s forced to look at him again. He’s not quite smiling, but not quite frowning either. She doesn’t know how to read him, doesn’t know if she wants to. There are a thousand thoughts running through her head and she doesn’t know how to sort through them or control them or – 

He pulls at her fingers hard. She stands up. He grabs each of her hands, walking behind her with his fingers entwined with hers. He steps forward over and over and it’s almost half a minute before she finally understands what’s going on. He’s leading her to the bedroom.

“You know that I’ve never –“

He interrupts her by spinning her around and kissing her again. His lips don’t leave hers even after the backs of her knees hit the bed and she starts to fall.

****

He moves in with her three weeks later.

****

She loves to kiss him when they’re both in the water. Loves being able to wrap her legs around his hips in the deep end of the pool. She runs her hands through his hair every chance she gets. It doesn’t matter to her whether they’re above or below the water, her lips just always find his.

More often then not, they end up laughing as they step out of pool together, and when they get upstairs to their condo – she’s thought of it as theirs for a while now – he lets his words drift on her damp skin. “I need you.” 

His voice is rough and deep and she forgets to breathe for just a second. Then she fits their lips together again more forcefully than before.

“I love you,” she sighs into his mouth.

****

She’s half undressed and under George when the door opens suddenly. Lips that were on her shoulder pull back quickly as he spins his head around to see who is there.

Gigi’s heart dances in her chest until she sees William and she pulls her shirt back down, screeching in a completely unladylike fashion.

William stares at her, then at George, then back at her. Gigi can feel the words she’s rehearsed over and over forming in her brain. She gives her speech, all of the reasons why George will stay with her, how George loves her and she loves him. They’ll always be together because they need each other.

Then George takes the cheque and her heart shatters.

Every bit of pain she’s ever felt comes out then. She doesn’t hold back, says things she doesn’t mean just because she knows William will take it, because she knows that her words will make him burn.

She wants him to hurt. She wants him to always remember that she could have been happy and he ruined it. He ruined her life. 

Finally she screams at him, “Get out!” And it’s absolutely what she wants. She wants him to leave her alone. She doesn’t want anything to do with her brother.

But then the door to the condo closes behind him with a click and she’s left alone.

****

She jumps into the pool at the condo, but as soon as her head is submerged she starts to panic. Emotions rushing through her too quickly to process and she has to get out. 

She coughs and sputters as she wraps herself in a towel and curls her knees in towards her chest. 

William finds her there by the poolside hours later. She doesn’t have the energy to tell him to go away. He puts her arm around his neck and supports most of her weight up the stairs to her condo. He doesn’t change her clothes, just wraps her in a robe, then a blanket and sits down beside her on her couch. 

She doesn’t apologize to him, but neither does he. They just sit quietly together, his arm around her, until she falls asleep.

****

The next morning still wearing her bathing suit and robe, she tells William that she’s quitting the swim team.

He looks at her seriously and asks her if she would like pancakes for breakfast.

As he works, mixing the batter together, she holds her breath. “I love you, Gigi,” he says, and she exhales.

She hasn’t forgiven him, maybe he hasn’t forgiven her either, but in this extremely domestic moment, Gigi Darcy thinks to herself that maybe her brother is the only constant in life she needs.


End file.
